


The Stare's Nest

by blythely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence, Draco has his own agenda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:59:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythely/pseuds/blythely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Right there," Draco stutters and he means it, and it makes him furious, so he calls Lupin <i>Professor</i> and doesn't mean that at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stare's Nest

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Worthy Prey](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/20812) by mousapelli. 



We are closed in, and the key is turned  
On our uncertainty; somewhere  
A man is killed, or a house burned,  
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:  
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,  
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;  
More Substance in our enmities  
Than in our love; O honey-bees,  
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

\- Meditations in Time of Civil War (W.B. Yeats, 1928)

 

* * *

 

 

"Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix," Lupin says.

Possibly he means it to be threatening.

Draco just smiles.

 

**[just before]**

Remus Lupin, werewolf, more crucial but in the end just as effortless as the others. Draco wishes his cousin were still alive, just to test his hypothesis about how _credulous_ these fools are, just to know if it is Gryffindor indoctrination or something else that makes them think a quick fuck is any indication of loyalty.

Draco closes his eyes and arches his back and thinks a little about Sirius Black and what a shame it all was.

("Terrible pity," Bellatrix had said, one hand on a picture from twenty years ago and the other on Draco's cheek, her thumb tracing a familial curve. "Same eyes, but of course you look nothing like him, boy. He was so handsome.")

Lupin gasps harshly--maybe he has some extra sense, after all, maybe he smells the leftovers of Black and lust and contempt on Draco's skin--and he grips Draco's hips hard; the deliberate slide of his cock lost to urgency.

It's not unpleasant, for sex entirely without magic.

They've all been like this, even the Weasley, who if nothing else was as pureblood as Draco, and it amused him and bored him until now, when it simply justifies his opinion that the Muggle-lovers are undeserving after all. Magic is a privilege that is squandered on these people.

Draco shifts back on his knees; if he must be doing this he at least wants Lupin's cock at that-- _that_ angle--and finally his heartbeat picks up. A little, a little more, and he bites down on the things he wants to say to this man because there will be ample and perfect time for that soon, and Bella is in his head again, approving, patronising.

"Right there," Draco stutters and he _means_ it, and it makes him furious, so he calls Lupin _Professor_ and doesn't mean that at all. It gives him a solid core of heated control, especially when Lupin groans, wraps his hand around Draco's cock and begins to stroke him. _Professor_ , Draco whispers again, retribution plush around him, and Lupin fucks him harder, out of rhythm and out of boundaries, no net of rules to keep him safe.

Details screw you. It's why Draco has cultivated none.

"Yes yes," he says, and allows himself to imagine what Lupin would be if he were _theirs_ , how terrifying and overwhelming he could be with his scars and his speed and his--

\--bite--

\--a thick rush, his blood singing with heat and the sweetest moments of confusion and ohh, pulse, ohh, clarity.

 

**[just before that]**

The kiss is intoxicating, without the guilt or suspicion Draco has come to expect, and for a moment he almost forgets to struggle. Lupin's mouth is insistent, nothing indefinite.

Draco offers some token resistance.

Lupin accuses him. "If the prey wasn't willing," he says, and the rest of the sentence is lost while Draco considers the corollary _predator_ and how _wrong_ it is that this man is Dumbledore's.

Almost as wrong as Harry. Nearly as beautiful. Much more of a tragedy, depending on how events follow.

"Slytherin manipulation and all that," Draco says, softly. The truth of it sends a shiver down his spine, gets him hard, so that when he kisses Lupin properly the lust is so genuine it makes Draco's blood thud in his ears. They move to the bedroom, and Lupin wants to undress him with his hands. It is so pedestrian, so _predictable_ , that Draco feels the small cavity of pity he has for these misguided Gryffindors (and they are; this ridiculous Order brims with red and gold and little else) fill with indignation.

"Pretty," Lupin murmurs.

"That was my main attraction for the Dark Lord, as well," and Draco has no idea of the truth of _that_ statement.

Maybe he should ask, tomorrow.

Lupin's mouth opens and closes. A cloud of guilt passes across his face, the same shadow they all wear, an embarrassed hush around any mention of the Other Side and the fate from which they presume to have rescued Draco. Veritaserum and Legilimency are the Order's infallible forces for truth, and Draco snickers, because his worth has always been as a _tabula rasa_ , and the deception never ceases to amuse him.

"There is always a loophole," his father had said, and the Dark Lord had nodded, and Draco had felt his mind _shift_.

 

**[just before that]**

He lets himself into Grimmauld Place, because they have gone so far as to trust him with this particular secret. Draco hasn't bothered to mention that he could have found the house without Dumbledore's imprimatur. If they are all too stupid to realise the hierarchy of magic and where blood falls on that, so be it on their heads.

Lupin is in the library, of course. Draco hears the springs in the couch reverberate when he stands, but there are no other sounds, because the man is quiet and clever and fancies himself a hunter.

Which is precisely the problem, Draco thinks, quietly washing his hands and face: they all fancy themselves something. Brave. Principled. _Right_. And then they carry those things around with them and never discard them, their little details, their precious narratives of morality, unquestioned and unassailable.

Unquestioned: Draco was working on that--or he had been, until the Order had decided that Harry's safety needed seclusion and had squirrelled him away, out of reach.

Unassailable he'll fix.

 

**[and before]**

Logic had never appeared to be Harry's strong suit, but Draco thinks that's because no-one had ever bothered to cultivate such a trait in their hero.

Why are you doing this? What do you think about that? Draco asks, because for each and every prosaic question (Where? When?) of Harry's he has another of his own. There is something poetic about the exchange of useless information for Harry Potter's slow-dawning empowerment.

Draco is under no illusions. But there's tyranny and there's tyranny, and he knows who he prefers.

 

**[but now]**

Draco traces Lupin's wand over the scars on Lupin's back and Lupin _lets_ him, shudders and shudders under the touch even when Draco gives him fair warning.

"I could stop your heart," he says, but Lupin just tilts his head to look at Draco with cool regard.

"You'd miss the fucking, I think." This is the fourth afternoon in a row that they have ended up in--on--beside--Draco's bed. It's not the sex that's stalled him. It's certainly not conscience.

He just had to find out where Harry was. Now he has enough clues, and Lupin will give him enough time.

" _Immobulus_ ," Draco says, concentrating very hard, because it is true, isn't it? You never get as good results with another wizard's wand. "I think I'll miss talking with you," he gestures, "like this. You were too lonely, Lupin. Too much to say."

Lupin's eyes widen at the blade and Draco puts a hand over his face while he works out where to cut.

"It's a lot kinder than what you did to my aunt." Draco slips the knife into Lupin's weakened grip, steps away from the bed to the door. He waits until the sheets are dark crimson before he removes the spell, places Lupin's wand carefully on a chair. "And it's for the best."

"You would be so disappointed in Harry. He has other ideas now."

*

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in, I think, 2004, but I can't even find this on my own journal, so who knows? It's a remix of mousapelli's Worthy Prey. In another life I would go back and write hundreds of thousands of words of this Draco and this Remus and the Harry you don't see but who is _terrifying_.


End file.
